We're finally back. The holidays were great and very relaxing for the most part.
Today, I'm just going to rant on a crappy airline. I don't usually rant, but this time I'm going to because we had a ridiculous time with American Airlines. First the plane was 40 minutes late. I'm laid back and it's not a big deal because it happens a lot and that's better than a few hours late. When we land in Kansas, our bags weren't there. All of the Dexter's stuff, our clothes, toiletries, everything was in limbo and we had a 2.5 hour drive to make still. The worst part of it was that we had the family portrait scheduled in just over 24 hours. We scrambled and went shopping for new clothes to wear for the portrait. We shopped for a couple hours and I couldn't find anything I liked for me or Dex. I was really upset about it because I had scoured the internet for Dexter's outfit for a couple weeks and I knew that I'd never find anything like it in Kansas. Mike called to see if they'd found our bags. YES they had and they were to be in out hands by 10pm - WHEW! We stop shopping and make the 2.5 hour drive home before the big snowstorm was to hit that night. Well 10 pm rolls around and the snow starts and no bags! We call American Airlines and they said that time was for a local delivery not for one a couple hundred miles away, but they would be delivered in the morning. Dexter is still wearing his outfit from the day before. I have no blankets. I'm out of diapers and most of his toys are also in the suitcase. There is also a snowstorm that's happening overnight, so who knows if the roads will even be driveable in the morning.
The snow ends up not being so bad, just a couple inches, but of course the suitcases STILL don't show up in the morning. We go shopping again. I finally find something to wear that will be okay. I can't find anything for Dexter and finally I just lose it when I realize that the best outfit I can find is black jeans (which are awesome) and a red thermal top onesie - no hat, no shoes. I get more upset at myself for getting upset about clothes because it's so trivial. I feel like the unreasonably upset bride on her wedding day because everything isn't perfect. We get home and we all get dressed. The photographer shows up and THEN the baggage courier calls. Mike drives to meet the courier to get our clothes because he can't find the house. This is exactly 28 hours after we landed. We get our clothes, get dressed again and take the pictures. I was so upset about the whole situation, I actually had another portrait done of Dexter at another studio just to make sure we had good pictures.
Oh and why we haven't flown American in 4 years is because… they "lost" a bag of our Christmas presents which were primarily about $400 worth of DVDs that American Airlines reimbursed us $70 for because DVDs are electronics and not covered under their baggage insurance. Funny thing is there was a birthday card in it that was mailed about a month later from the airport it "didn't make it to".
But that wasn't the end of the crappy American Airlines story. We had to fly back to California on American Airlines too. The plane was on time out of Kansas, but we had a 3 hour layover in Dallas. I like the Dallas airport, so it's not so bad because there is stuff to do and restaurants to eat at. The layover became 4 hours. Again a delay of around 40 minutes which would put us at SFO at about 9:45pm or so. We get in and go to get our bags and wait… and wait… and wait… for an hour until bags finally start going around the carousel. Meanwhile tired babies are crying and people start getting upset with the baggage people. It was practically a mob scene with 20 people all swarming the customer service office at once. Luckily for us, Dexter just slept through the whole infuriating experience. We got home just in time for the clock to tick over to the new year and we'd been traveling since 10 am (8am Pacific time) for a whopping 16 hours total. A really, really long day with the grand finale of walking into a clean house and sleeping in my own comfy bed.
That's my rant, thanks for letting me let off some steam and bearing with a not so fun start to the blog in 2008. The story of our trip will be posted tomorrow…
